ARCHIVE - KLA Terror & Ethnic Cleansing

NOTE: This archive, intended for research purposes, contains copyrighted material, included "for fair use only."

1. Feb. 25, 1999; Letter on Kosovo and World War 2 from Steve M. -Australia
2. NY Times, July 12, 1982; Exodus of Serbs Stirs Province in Yugoslavia
3. Census Data; Strategic Issues Today, July 6, 1998; Extract on 1981 Kosovo Census
4. NY Times, Nov. 1, 1987; In Yugo, Rising Ethnic Strife Brings Fears of Worse Civil Conflict
5. Investors Business Daily, Mar. 12, 1999; Yugoslavia's Bloody History
6. AFP, Dec. 13, 1998; Milosevic and Christopher Hill Estimate Kosovo Population
7. AFP, Dec. 25, 1998; Albanian Catholics at Christmas, Christian Albanians
8. Institute of Geopolitical Studies - The "Greater Albania" Concept
9. The Guardian, March 1, 1999; "We will fight, KLA leaders vow."
10. BBC Aug. 2, 1998; Circassian Community Flees Kosovo Conflict
11. AFP, Oct. 1998; Albanian Village Organizes Against KLA
12. The Times, Dec. 16, 1998; Serbian troops seal border villages in hunt for guerrillas
13. Reuters, Jan 29, 1999; West Helps Kosovo Albanian "Terroriists"
14. AP, Feb. 8, 1999; Bodies of Ethnic Albanians Found
15. Yugo Ministry of Interior Murder-Kidnap Statistics 1991- Feb.7, 1999
16. BBC, Feb. 8, 1999; Macedonia tries 9 Albanians
17. Murders of Catholic Albanian Clan Members; abstract
18. Feb. 24, 1999; Turkish Statement on Rights of All Minorities in Kosovo, including Turks
19. Feb. 25, 1999; Phone conversation, Kos. Vitina Catholic Albanians emigrate
20. Reuters/Tanjug, PMC, Feb. 26, 1999; Three Wounded Albanian Local Police
21. Serbia Info News, March 1, 1999; Samodrez village without Serbs
22. Blic Magazine, Mar. 2, 1999; UN Spokeswoman Pola Gedini on Serbs Cleansed from 90+ Villages
23. Human Events, March 1, 1999; Jane's Says Muslim Guerrillas Wage War of Terror Against Serbs

Are the Albanians of Kosovo a 90% majority? Have they, indeed, been oppressed for years as they claim, or have they been the oppressors? How many Albanians are Catholics and Orthodox Christians who also oppose both Ibrahim Rugova's "pacifist" boycott of government, and the KLA's ruthless insurrection. Clearly the KLA has killed more than 120 Albanian civilians for collaborating with the government, while also killing Serb civilians and some from other ethnic minorities, totaling at least 115 for all non-Albanian civilians.

Articles herein begin with indications of Albanian Muslims attempting the ethnic cleansing of Serbs in World War II, when Geg Muslims joined the SS Skanderbeg Mountain Infantry Division. While Tito put the area at peace, he let most of the Albanian Nazis off the hook, forbade Serbs from moving back to their homes in Kosovo, then invited more Albanians to migrate into Kosovo from Enver Hoxha's more totalitarian Al;banian "workers' paradise."

Articles then include population estimates from 1981 and 1998, plus a description of the "Greater Albanian" dream of the Geg Muslims, followed by indications of who is actually being cleansed by whom.

When the Albanians achieved an "autonomous" government charter from Tito in 1974, the Muslim majority immediately began harassing and discriminating against Serbs, Roma (Gypsies), Catholic Albanians, Circassians, Turks, Gorani (Slavic Muslims) and everybody else not aligned with the Muslim clans who ran the state. In the countryside in Drenica and elsewhere, violent methods included barn burnings, slaughter of farm animals, sabotage of machinery, rape (including some nuns), church desecrations and vendetta murder. At the same time, they were getting further involved at home, throughout Europe and in the US with the Kosovo Heroin Mafia, which by 1985 was being criminally prosecuted in New York by Rudy Giuliani (see Archive KLA-Drugs).

Officially, the Kosovo government refused employment to non-Muslims and practiced other forms of official discrimination. This is democracy's worst weakness, the tyranny of a chauvinistic majority group towards its minority groups; something America's Blacks and Latinos can understand.

Also, Tito's constitutional mischief included provisions in the provincial charters for Kosovo and Vojvodina that gave them the power to veto ("nullify") laws for Serbia-proper and even Yugoslavia that did not effect the provinces. This is similar to Jefferson and Madison's attack on the Alien and Sedition Act via the Kentucky Resolves and Virginia Resolves in 1800, or the "Nullification Crisis" of 1832-33 between South Carolina and President Andrew Jackson over a new Tariff Act. Further, the Federal and Serbian Courts had no "supreme court" review or appeal of decisions in Kosovo courts. This was constitutional chaos.

In 1981, independence-minded Muslims began a series of demonstrations and boycotts that grew in intensity over the following seven years. By 1982, as you will read below, some 57,000 Serbs had emigrated. In this period, the Albanians began to demand the right not to have to learn Serb as well as the Geg language. They attempted to ban the Cyrillic alphabet and began to eliminate Serb books from libraries. The New York Times reported the rapidly deteriorating situation again on Nov. 1, 1987 (article #4).

Yugoslavia's weak post-Tito Presidency was clueless at finding a way to handle this outrageous communal misbehavior. By 1989, when Mr. Milosevic, then President of the Serbian Republic, ended some of Kosovo's governmental powers, another`170,000+ Serbs had abandoned their homes to get away from the mess and the terror. Meanwhile, the Kosovo Heroin Mafia increased its hold on the trade in Europe and America (see SIRIUS Archive "KLA-Drugs"), using the profits to buy arms for the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) which was terrorizing the non-Muslim Albanian citizens of the province.

The pacifists around Ibrahim Rugova's League for a Democratic Kosovo (LDK) have staged a boycott ever since Mr. Milosevic's actions, but as witnesses on the ground know, there has been no real suspension of individual rights or even of free speech in Kosovo, only a crackdown against KLA terrorism, against group privileges, and the attempt by the Albanians to steal Kosovo.

Peace may be imposed through strength, but can only be maintained through justice based on the respect for the rule of law. Justice must be built on the truth. To achieve that state outside observers must understand the origins and true nature of the communal violence going on in the beleaguered Yugoslav province of Kosovo.

I am reminded of something Edmund Burke said at the time of the French Revolution:

This collection is still spotty, but should serve to give the reader an indication of just how long these xenophobic elements within the Albanian Muslim majority of Kosovo have been intimidating, oppressing, murdering and ethnicly cleansing not just Serbs (230,000 of whom had been cleansed from the province between 1974 and 1989 and tens of thousands more in the last year of KLA terror) but Gypsies, Turks, Circassians, Gorani, and Catholic Albanians.

As more relevant articles are retrieved, they will be added to this core of readings.

Benjamin Works

1. Subj: Thank You

Date: 99-02-26 03:51:07 EST

From: steve_m

Dear Mr Works

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you for the tremendous effort that you have placed in presenting the truth about Kosovo. As an Australian of Serbian decent I thank you from my heart. To date I have not seen any websites that present things from a Serbian point of view. It seems that the whole world is on a relentless campaign to demonise the Serbian people, but there is another side to Kosovo that started many years ago. I'd like to share a personal point of view.

My father was born in Metohija before WWII. When war broke out in 1941, my father's family was expelled from Kosovo with some other 200,000 people. Because my grandfather was killed whilst serving in the Chetniks my father was never allowed to return. When some family friends visited the region in the 1970's they said that there was nothing left of our village. The village was completely razed by the Albanians during WWII. The land my grandfather owned had been redistributed amongst them. Now the Albanians have declared a blood feud with my grandfather's family and we can never return there. The one thing that I desire the most of all things is just to go the village my father was born in for just one day.

The Albanians have not only stolen our rightful inheritance, but stolen our dream of returning. I suppose that is why we are so angry and will never give up Kosovo without a fight.

Regards

Steve M. - Australia

The New York Times, Monday, July 12, 1982

"Serbs .... have... been harassed by Albanians and have packed up and left the region.

"The [Albanian] nationalists have a two-point platform, ...first to establish what they call an ethnically clean Albanian republic and then the merger with Albania to form a greater Albania."

"Some 57,000 Serbs have left Kosovo in the last decade... The exodus of Serbs is admittedly one of the main problems... in Kosovo..."

3. Extract From SIT-7-6-98, Strategic Issues Today; Kosovo Minorities in Census Data:

The following data were provided in March by a Professor Batakovic to Bob Djurdjevic, a computer industry consultant and independent journalist from Phoenix, AZ. Mr. Djurdjevic forwarded the following note, which I have edited and added percentage breakdowns for Prof. Batakovic's census figures:

"According to Prof. D. Batakovic, member of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences (SANU), who has done extensive demographic studies of Kosovo, the following are the Kosovo population stats in 1981, when the manipulation of the numbers was not as blatant as it is now:"

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Kosovo Population (per Prof. Dusan Batakovic, SANU, 11-Mar-98):

POPULATION.....1981....Percent

Albanians......1,226,736....77.5%

Other Muslims......71,075 .....4.5%..(Turkish and Slavic Muslims)

Serbs........209,497. ...13.2%

Montenegrin Serbs...27,028 ......1.7%

Others (Gypsies, etc.)..50,104.......3.0%

Total........1,584,440

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Note: The Census data do not differentiate between Albanian Muslims (the majority) and Albanian Roman Catholics (a significant minority). Also, recall that some 50,000 Serbs had left the province by the time of this census, as confirmed by The New York Times article preceding this item.

Now the population has grown over the last 17 years and some non-Albanians have moved out, being tired of this political nonsense, but the Muslim and Christian communities of non-Albanians remain strongly entrenched in Kosovo as do the Albanian Catholics. So what we have is Albanian Geg neo-fascists and drug lords against virtually everybody --and anybody-- else.

At the same time, it is reasonably estimated that some 300,000 Albanians have left Kosovo for Switzerland, Germany and the US since the Milosevic crackdown, which qualifies these emigrants as refugees.

The International Roma organization militating for Gypsy rights estimates the Kosovo Gypsy population as high as 400,000 and others estimate the Kosovo Roma at 100-150,000. -BCW, Feb. 27, 1999.

November 1, 1987, Sunday, Late City Final Edition

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1, Page 14, Column 1; Foreign Desk

HEADLINE: In Yugoslavia, Rising Ethnic Strife Brings Fears of Worse Civil Conflict

BYLINE: By DAVID BINDER, Special to the New York Times

DATELINE: BELGRADE, Yugoslavia

Portions of southern Yugoslavia have reached such a state of ethnic friction that Yugoslavs have begun to talk of the horrifying possibility of ''civil war'' in a land that lost one-tenth of its population, or 1.7 million people, in World War II.

The current hostilities pit separatist-minded ethnic Albanians against the various Slavic populations of Yugoslavia and occur at all levels of society, from the highest officials to the humblest peasants.

A young Army conscript of ethnic Albanian origin shot up his barracks, killing four sleeping Slavic bunkmates and wounding six others.

The army says it has uncovered hundreds of subversive ethnic Albanian cells in its ranks. Some arsenals have been raided.

Ethnic Albanians in the Government have manipulated public funds and regulations to take over land belonging to Serbs. And politicians have exchanged vicious insults.

Slavic Orthodox churches have been attacked, and flags have been torn down. Wells have been poisoned and crops burned. Slavic boys have been knifed, and some young ethnic Albanians have been told by their elders to rape Serbian girls.

Ethnic Albanians comprise the fastest growing nationality in Yugoslavia and are expected soon to become its third largest, after the Serbs and Croats.

. The goal of the radical nationalists among them, one said in an interview, is an ''ethnic Albania that includes western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, part of southern Serbia, Kosovo and Albania itself.'' That includes large chunks of the republics that make up the southern half of Yugoslavia.

Other ethnic Albanian separatists admit to a vision of a greater Albania governed from Pristina in southern Yugoslavia rather than Tirana, the capital of neighboring Albania.

There is no evidence that the hard-line Communist Government in Tirana is giving them material assistance.

The principal battleground is the region called Kosovo, a high plateau ringed by mountains that is somewhat smaller than New Jersey. Ethnic Albanians there make up 85 percent of the population of 1.7 million. The rest are Serbians and Montenegrins.

As Slavs flee the protracted violence, Kosovo is becoming what ethnic Albanian nationalists have been demanding for years, and especially strongly since the bloody rioting by ethnic Albanians in Pristina in 1981 - an ''ethnically pure'' Albanian region, a ''Republic of Kosovo'' in all but name.

The violence, a journalist in Kosovo said, is escalating to ''the worst in the last seven years.''

Many Yugoslavs blame the troubles on the ethnic Albanians, but the matter is more complex in a country with as many nationalities and religions as Yugoslavia's and involves economic development, law, politics, families and flags. As recently as 20 years ago, the Slavic majority treated ethnic Albanians as inferiors to be employed as hewers of wood and carriers of heating coal. The ethnic Albanians, who now number 2 million, were officially deemed a minority, not a constituent nationality, as they are today.

Were the ethnic tensions restricted to Kosovo, Yugoslavia's problems with its Albanian nationals might be more manageable. But some Yugoslavs and some ethnic Albanians believe the struggle has spread far beyond Kosovo. Macedonia, a republic to the south with a population of 1.8 million, has a restive ethnic Albanian minority of 350,000.

''We've already lost western Macedonia to the Albanians,'' said a member of the Yugoslav party presidium, explaining that the ethnic minority had driven the Slavic Macedonians out of the region.

Last summer, the authorities in Kosovo said they documented 40 ethnic Albanian attacks on Slavs in two months. In the last two years, 320 ethnic Albanians have been sentenced for political crimes, nearly half of them characterized as severe.

In one incident, Fadil Hoxha, once the leading politician of ethnic Albanian origin in Yugoslavia, joked at an official dinner in Prizren last year that Serbian women should be used to satisfy potential ethnic Albanian rapists. After his quip was reported this October, Serbian women in Kosovo protested, and Mr. Hoxha was dismissed from the Communist Party.

As a precaution, the central authorities dispatched 380 riot police officers to the Kosovo region for the first time in four years.

Officials in Belgrade view the ethnic Albanian challenge as imperiling the foundations of the multinational experiment called federal Yugoslavia, which consists of six republics and two provinces.

High-ranking officials have spoken of the ''Lebanonizing'' of their country and have compared its troubles to the strife in Northern Ireland.

Borislav Jovic, a member of the Serbian party's presidency, spoke in an interview of the prospect of ''two Albanias, one north and one south, like divided Germany or Korea,'' and of ''practically the breakup of Yugoslavia.'' He added: ''Time is working against us.''

The federal Secretary for National Defense, Fleet Adm. Branko Mamula, told the army's party organization in September of efforts by ethnic Albanians to subvert the armed forces. ''Between 1981 and 1987 a total of 216 illegal organizations with 1,435 members of Albanian nationality were discovered in the Yugoslav People's Army,'' he said. Admiral Mamula said ethnic Albanian subversives had been preparing for ''killing officers and soldiers, poisoning food and water, sabotage, breaking into weapons arsenals and stealing arms and ammunition, desertion and causing flagrant nationalist incidents in army units.''

Coming three weeks after the ethnic Albanian draftee, Aziz Kelmendi, had slaughtered his Slavic comrades in the barracks at Paracin, the speech struck fear in thousands of families whose sons were about to start their mandatory year of military service.

Because the Albanians have had a relatively high birth rate, one-quarter of the army's 200,000 conscripts this year are ethnic Albanians. Admiral Mamula suggested that 3,792 were potential human timebombs.

He said the army had ''not been provided with details relevant for assessing their behavior.'' But a number of Belgrade politicians said they doubted the Yugoslav armed forces would be used to intervene in Kosovo as they were to quell violent rioting in 1981 in Pristina. They reason that the army leadership is extremely reluctant to become involved in what is, in the first place, a political issue.

Ethnic Albanians already control almost every phase of life in the autonomous province of Kosovo, including the police, judiciary, civil service, schools and factories. Non-Albanian visitors almost immediately feel the independence - and suspicion - of the ethnic Albanian authorities.

Region's Slavs Lack Strength

While 200,000 Serbs and Montenegrins still live in the province, they are scattered and lack cohesion. In the last seven years, 20,000 of them have fled the province, often leaving behind farmsteads and houses, for the safety of the Slavic north.

Until September, the majority of the Serbian Communist Party leadership pursued a policy of seeking compromise with the Kosovo party hierarchy under its ethnic Albanian leader, Azem Vlasi.

But during a 30-hour session of the Serbian central committee in late September, the Serbian party secretary, Slobodan Milosevic, deposed Dragisa Pavlovic, as head of Belgrade's party organization, the country's largest. Mr. Milosevic accused Mr. Pavlovic of being an appeaser who was soft on Albanian radicals. Mr. Milosevic had courted the Serbian backlash vote with speeches in Kosovo itself calling for ''the policy of the hard hand.''

''We will go up against anti-Socialist forces, even if they call us Stalinists,'' Mr. Milosevic declared recently. That a Yugoslav politician would invite someone to call him a Stalinist even four decades after Tito's epochal break with Stalin, is a measure of the state into which Serbian politics have fallen. For the moment, Mr. Milosevic and his supporters appear to be staking their careers on a strategy of confrontation with the Kosovo ethnic Albanians.

Other Yugoslav politicians have expressed alarm. ''There is no doubt Kosovo is a problem of the whole country, a powder keg on which we all sit,'' said Milan Kucan, head of the Slovenian Communist Party.

Remzi Koljgeci, of the Kosovo party leadership, said in an interview in Pristina that ''relations are cold'' between the ethnic Albanians and Serbs of the province, that there were too many ''people without hope.''

But many of those interviewed agreed it was also a rare opportunity for Yugoslavia to take radical political and economic steps, as Tito did when he broke with the Soviet bloc in 1948.

Efforts are under way to strengthen central authority through amendments to the constitution. The League of Communists is planning an extraordinary party congress before March to address the country's grave problems.

The hope is that something will be done then to exert the rule of law in Kosovo while drawing ethnic Albanians back into Yugoslavia's mainstream.

5. Investor's Business Daily

March 12, 1999 SECTION: National Issue; Pg. A1

HEADLINE: YUGOSLAVIA'S BLOODY HISTORY

BYLINE: By Brian Mitchell, Investor's Daily

The Kosovo countryside is dotted with Serbian churches and monasteries. Many are centuries old. In fact, Serbs often call Kosovo ''Kosmet'' -short for Kosovo and Metohija, or lands belonging to the church.

Kosovo is the ancestral homeland of the Serbs, their spiritual center, their Israel.

But as far as the U.S. and NATO are concerned, the Serbs in Kosovo are history.

With Ethnic Albanians now making up 90% of the population, here's the only history that NATO seems to care about: Albanians lost control over Kosovo in 1989 and Serbs started cracking down on Albanian separatists in February 1998.

Both events are used to blame the fighting in Kosovo on one man -Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

''Milosevic has been at the center of every crisis in the former Yugoslavia over the last decade,'' said State Department spokesman James Rubin last December. ''He is not simply part of the problem; Milosevic is the problem.''

It's hardly that simple, many Balkan specialists say. Blaming Milosevic ignores the fact that control over Kosovo has changed hands six times in this century. It also ignores the Nazi-inspired genocide of Serbs by Croats and Muslims in World War II.

And it fails to acknowledge a painful lesson the world was supposed to have learned in World War I: Too often, world powers have used the Balkans as their battlefield, even though they had no vital interest in the region.

The U.S. may soon send 4,000 soldiers as part of a NATO force that occupies Kosovo. A number of analysts fear that the architects of Western policy in the Balkans are denying or ignoring the relevance of the region's history.

''Great powers have kept looking there for the opportunity to define themselves,'' said Michael Stenton, who teaches at Cambridge University in England. ''But whenever great powers have gotten involved, (they've) usually managed to make things worse.''

In his book ''To End a War'' (Random House, 1998), U.S. Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke covers Yugoslavia's troubled past in just two pages. The pages are not a summary of history but an argument against the belief, common among historians, that ''ancient hatreds'' are the source of conflict in the region.

''Yugoslavia's tragedy was not foreordained,'' he wrote. ''It was the product of bad, even criminal, political leaders who encouraged ethnic confrontation for personal, political, and financial gain.''

To be sure, hatreds and fears have been exploited by leaders on all sides, but other analysts are not so ready to dismiss them.

''Of course they're being manipulated, but that doesn't mean they aren't real and felt very viscerally by very many people,'' said Carl Jacobsen, professor of history at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.

''As soon as you mention a bit of history, you're told that history doesn't really matter, it's the manipulation of history that matters,'' Stenton said. ''Try telling that to American Jews.''

The Serbs suffered their own holocaust during World War II, every bit as bloody as the Nazi genocide of the Jews. Many Serbs alive today have family members who were murdered by forces allied with the Nazis.

During World War II, the pro-Nazi ''Ustasha'' government of Croatia originated the policy of ''ethnicko ciscenje,'' or ethnic cleansing. Some 700,000 Serbs and 50,000 Jews and Gypsies were killed.

The Ustasha terror appalled even the Nazis. In early 1942, Gestapo agents reported to SS chief Heinrich Himmler that the Ustasha had already ''massacred or sadistically tortured to death'' some 300,000 Serbs.

The report said the atrocities were committed ''in a bestial manner not only against males of conscript age, but especially against helpless old people, women and children.''

Europe and the U.S. may have forgotten this history when they granted official recognition to Croatia and Bosnia after the breakup of Yugoslavia. But the Serbs hadn't.

''Once the Serbs were turned into a minority among hostile peoples who murdered them a few years ago, then they began to react,'' said Sir Alfred Sherman, chairman of the Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan Studies and adviser to Margaret Thatcher when she was Britain's prime minister.

For refusing to live again under Croat and Muslim rule, the Serbs were branded the aggressors in Bosnia. With U.S. approval, the Croats were allowed to drive some 300,000 from the Krajina region within Croatia, where Serbs had lived for five centuries.

NATO opposes the right of self-determination for Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia, but it supports the same right for Kosovo Albanians, again ignoring the history of the region.

Both Serbs and Albanians have lived in Kosovo for centuries. They even fought on the same side against the Turks at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. Afterward, however, most Albanians switched sides and converted to Islam.

Under Turkish rule, Albanians were favored and the Serbs who remained Christians were oppressed. The Serbs did not regain their independence from the Turks until 1878. They didn't recover Kosovo until 1912. By then, the Albanians were probably a majority, Stenton says.

The Serbs lost control over Kosovo in both world wars. Each time, the conquering army favored the Albanians over the vanquished Serbs.

''That's the problem,'' Stenton said. ''One side keeps being told the place is really theirs, and then it turns around.''

During World War II, the Nazis recruited Albanians into the infamous SS Skanderbeg Division. Named for a 15th-century Albanian hero, the unit was used to enforce Nazi control over the region.

After World War II, the Serbs did not regain control, however. The Communists took over Yugoslavia, led by Josip Broz Tito and supported by Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin.

Tito created a federation of national republics on the Soviet model. Kosovo was given a degree of autonomy from the Serbian Republic. Albanian immigration into Kosovo was encouraged, and Serbs driven out during the war were not allowed to return.

In 1974, Tito granted Kosovo more autonomy in exchange for the support of Kosovo's Albanian Communists. The Albanians used their autonomy to push Serbs out of power and out of Kosovo.

''The 1970s were an unpleasant time for the Serbs (in Kosovo),'' Stenton said. ''The schoolbooks were full of not Yugoslav Communist propaganda, but Albanian Communist propaganda.''

Pressure on Serbs in Kosovo increased after Tito died in 1980. In July 1982, The New York Times reported that 57,000 Serbs had left Kosovo on account of harassment by Albanian nationalists, who wanted an ''ethnically clean Albanian republic.''

In 1989, Slobodan Milosevic, then president of the Serbian Republic within Yugoslavia, seized upon the harassment of Serbs in Albanian [sic! Kosovo] to win favor with Serbian voters. At his urging, the Yugoslav government downgraded Kosovo's autonomy to the status it held before 1974.

Kosovo Albanians responded with a boycott of elections, setting up their own shadow government. Some later formed the Kosovo Liberation Army.

Some analysts believe that the KLA has ties to the international Albanian criminal network, which is linked to the world heroin trade.

The collapse of the Albanian government in 1997 made large caches of arms and ammunition available. NATO's intervention on behalf of the Bosnian Muslims in 1995 gave the KLA hope that NATO might do the same for other people oppressed by the Serbs.

In December 1997, the KLA stepped up its attacks against Serbs. Milosevic responded with a crackdown that defeated the KLA on the battlefield but got the worst of it in the Western media.

Today, NATO is still threatening to bomb the Serbs for not giving Kosovo a vote on autonomy in three years and not letting outside troops occupy the region in the period before the vote takes place. Meanwhile, the KLA enjoys the support of Albanians and Muslims worldwide.

According to Jane's International Defence Review, Serbian troops intercepted a band of 50 guerrillas crossing into Kosovo from Albania in July. The group included one Yemeni and 16 Saudis, ''six of whom bore passports with Macedonian Albanian names,'' the review stated.

There are also unconfirmed reports that German and American mercenaries are training and equipping the KLA. Who is paying them is unknown, but analysts believe their presence must have at least the tacit approval of NATO authorities.

NATO's record in Bosnia does not bode well for Serbs in Kosovo, even if Milosevic allows NATO troops to enter.

Under NATO occupation, Bosnian Serbs live as second-class citizens. All but 2% of foreign aid goes to Muslims or Croats. Serb forces have been forced to surrender most weapons, but NATO continues to train and equip Muslim forces.

Tensions flared this week when Carlos Westendorp, the NATO-backed governor of Bosnia, decided that local Serbs would not be allowed control of Brcko, the town linking one half of the Bosnian Serb Republic with the other half. Instead, the Serbs would share Brcko with the Croats and Muslims.

''The Brcko decision was a signal to the Serbs that we're not interested in having a viable Bosnian Serb Republic,'' said Ron Hatchett, former Balkan analyst for the Defense Department, now director of the Center for International Studies at the University of St. Thomas in Houston.

''They just want to make it appear that the Serbs have defaulted on (the Dayton treaty). Then they're going to rewrite the agreement,'' he said.

6. Milosevic and Christopher Hill Trade Kosovo Population Estimates

BELGRADE, Dec 13 (AFP) - There are no more than 800,000 ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, less than half the commonly accepted number, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic said in an interview published Sunday.

Kosovo Albanians, citing a 1991 census, have said they make up 90 percent, or 1.8 million, of the total population in the Serbian province, where rebels are struggling for independence. But Milosevic begged to differ, in an interview with the Washington Post and Newsweek that was carried Sunday in the Serbian-language newspaper Politika.

"We estimate that there are around 800,000 Albanians in Kosovo," he said.

US Kosovo mediator Christopher Hill "will maybe say there are around 900,000, and we will not discuss that," he [Milosevic] said.

"The truth is that there are 240,000 Serbs and Montenegrins, more than 150,000 (non-Albanian) Moslems, more than 150,000 gypsies and Egyptians and a Turkish minority of around 40,000 to 50,000 people. This makes more than 600,000," Milosevic said.

Because of these numbers, Belgrade insists on a political settlement for Kosovo that would guarantee "equal rights to all the communities" living there, he said.

Belgrade also estimates that tens of thousands of Kosovo Albanians have emigated since early 1990s.

To end the controversy over Kosovo's numbers, Milosevic proposed a new census that would be supervised by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

7. Note: Not all Albanians are Muslim. Catholics and Orthodox tend to oppose the KLA and Rugova. --BCW

AFP, Dec. 25, 1998; Catholic Albanians at Christmas

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, Dec 25 (AFP) - The Catholic priest of Pristina, appealed on Christmas Eve for a halt to fighting in Kosovo after a day which saw the worst fighting between Serb forces and Albanian separatists in many weeks.

"We pray that the war will stop," Father Janez said before congregation of some 250 people.

No official from the international community present in Kosovo attended the service.

A clergyman said "very few people" had come to worship compared to previous years.

The Church of St. Anthony which has room for 500 people was "too small to fit everyone in, before the fighting began. Now people are too scared to go out at nights," he said.

Several thousand Catholics live in Pristina which has a total population of about 200,000.

. About 70 percent of the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo are Moslems, 20 percent Orthodox and 10 percent Catholic..

8. Subj: Institute of Geopolitical Studies - Greater Albania Concept

Date: 99-02-02 05:29:46 EST

Inserts from publication by the Institute of Geopolitical Studies

"GREATER ALBANIA" CONCEPTS AND POSSIBLE CONSEQUENCES

"GREATER ALBANIA": GEOGRAPHIC, CULTURAL AND CIVILIZATION IDENTITY

The Project of a "Greater Albania" - essentially a nationalistic construct - derives its driving force from the Albanian vision of their ethnic borders according to their "acquired rights". That vision is contrary to political and historical realities. The Albanian project of national unification came into being during the great Balkan turmoil, on the eve of the Berlin Congress of 1878. It did not materialize as a result of a fully-developed national movement, rather it was an immediate outcome of a clash between the empires. It was precisely such a context - drawing borders around oneâs own community - that resulted in undemocratic and antiliberal pattern which most non-Albanians saw as the most distinguished feature of the Albanian national movement.

Historically, the concept of a "Greater Albania" was based on a false premise that the realization of national program is possible when supported by the Great Powers. Geopolitically, this project demanded not only the territories which ethnically and historically belonged to the Albanians, but went far beyond and encompassed the entire Albanian ethnic population, dispersed in different areas over the neighboring Balkan regions. The whole of Albanian nation lived within the Ottoman Empire. The Albanians - being predominantly Muslims - belonged to a privileged stratum of the population in a theocratically structured Empire. Their political and, partly, their social dominance over the Christian (Serb, Bulgarian, or Greek) rayah was considered legitimate. From the perspective of the Muslim Albanians - who always played the leading role in the Albanian national movement - this fact alone sufficed to place their rights above the rights of any other ethnic community.

The other national groups which - through their already-established states, or through mutual accord - also placed claims upon certain territories, were considered illegitimate. Within the Ottoman Empire, the Serbs and the Greeks were in inferior position to the Muslim Albanians, and their rights. as rayah - or dependent population - were rarely taken into considerations. Therefore, the Albanian League, created in June 1878 in Prizren, presented its project of a "Greater Albania" as if - in the territory it lay its claims on - there was no population , forming an absolute majority only in the two of them - in Scutari and Yanina vilayets. These vilayets roughly corresponded with the ethnic and historic borders of Albania. When the support of other national groups was needed in addressing the Great Porte in Constantinople, the Albanians forced the rayah to sign documents dealing exclusively with the demands posed by the Albanian national leadership. When the Albanian national movement addressed the Great Powers, the whole of territory its leadership claimed - according to the ethnic principle - was presented in their memoranda as being homogeneously Albanian.

Because of that, the first stage of a "Greater Albania" strategy was strongly religiously motivated, having in view that the whole movement was dominated by a group of conservative Muslim beys and tribal chieftains. Discrimination against other ethnic groups went along religious line, which often, in the Balkans, ensued in religion-generated "ethnicity." Thus, in Albanian dominated areas, ethnic Serbs-converted to Islam, became - to all intents and purposes - "Albanians," as happened to the Greeks and the Bulgarians. The instruments for realizing this objective of bogus "ethnic" homogenization were the state and political institutions of the declining Ottoman Empire. They were the traditional means of force in ethnic ad religious clashes, whereby unacceptable but uncontestable political solutions were imposed on a weaker national group, essentially jeopardizing its collective and individual rights. The "Greater Albania" concept was therefore not a result of a jointly and autonomously expressed will of the population of a particular territory to live in a new commonwealth, but an attempt - through religious and ethnic discrimination - to achieve the goals of only one of the mutually opposed national- religious groups.

Having in view that in its first public action (1878-1881), the Albanian national movement was already based on antiliberal and antidemocratic premises; such a pattern of national unification - with its undemocratic and discriminatory content, considered afterwards as a political ideal - strongly marked all later attempts to create a "Greater Albania."

The other permanent feature of the undemocratic and antiliberal concept of "Greater Albania" involved the idea of solving the Albanian national question with support of the Great Power that, at any particular period, was the most influential in the region. In such a strategy, two objectives were of paramount importance: first, to create a "Greater Albania" regardless of the opposition of other ethnic groups - and even to impose to them, with foreign support, a solution that would deny them their collective and human rights; and, secondly, under favorable international circumstances, to make such a solution permanent by forcing the members of other ethnic groups to move trough various forms of pressure. The combination of the internal and outside pressures, basic to such a concept, subsequently became a pattern for all similar interethnic conflicts it the region, thereby creating dangerous precedents.

Two attempts at creating a "Greater Albania" according to such social, historical, and political "technology" have been made throughout the twentieth century. The first occurred in 1912, supported of

Austria-Hungary, and the second took place in 1941, with the direct intervention of fascist Italy and the logistics support of the Third Reich. While the first attempt, which failed due to unfavorable international circumstances, could be explained away as a reaction to the victory of the allied Balkan coalition in the First Balkan War, the second was successful; it took place during full Axis expansion and its political domination of occupied Europe.

A "Greater Albania", therefore (including the state of Albania), could function only as a result of foreign intervention in undemocratic conditions. In fact, the concept of a "Greater Albania" is based on the forced Albanization of territories inhabited by a number of non-Albanian ethnic groups. The first successful implementation of this concept took place on August 12, 1941, when a "Greater Albania" was created as a fascist Italian protectorate. However, the expulsion of the non-Albanian population - primarily the Serbs - was dictated not by the Axis, but by the Albanian leaders. Reasserting the traditions of the 1878 Albanian League - stemming from the need to create an Albanian state inside its alleged ethnic borders - the intent was still the same: to forcibly assimilate or exile other ethnic and religious groups from "Albanian" territory.

Therefore, in the strategy to create a "Greater Albania" several different tactics can be discerned - including sudden, miraculous changes in ideological orientation - but all of them, taken together, strive towards one and the same goal - the creation of an ethnically pure state which far surpasses its actual, ethnic borders. In such a state there is no room for other nations. Such a concept is contrary to the international standards which reject ethnic exclusiveness and promote a multi-cultural, civic, and democratic society. An ostensibly democratic legitimization of the Albanian question, accompanied with constant appeals to human rights, is in fact only a masked demand for implementing exclusively Albanian collective rights, on the erroneous, propaganda-generated principle of "national homogeneity."

Geopolitically, the Albanian movement has a long and well-tested experience in relying on the historic or periodic enemies of the states whose territories it has claims on. In the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, one such Balkan enemy was Austria-Hungary, to be followed - in the period between the two world wars - by Italy. During the Second World War, Yugoslaviaâs and Greeceâs enemies to be courted were Mussoliniâs Italy and the Third Reich. After 1948, Albanian demands were supported by the USSR and China, while after the end of the Cold War, from 1990, they turned for aid to the only remaining military alliance - NATO - and began professing the prevailing "politically correct" discourse, using Western rhetoric, and at least formally, promoting democratic values.

The secessionistsâ current designs to annex Serbiaâs south province of Kosovo and Metohija to Albania are supposed to be achieved in stages. The main factor they count on is political and military exhaustion of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and its low rating with the international community. As opposed to Kosovo and Metohija, however, Albanian pretensions towards Macedonia (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia), whose borders are safeguarded by international forces, are of a strategically different nature, and at the present involve only the demands for a separate Albanian-language school system that would create conditions for subsequent demands for territorial autonomy.

The first stage in creating a "Greater Albania" will be the change of state and political status of Kosovo and Metohija within Serbia, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. This is because present Albania - with all its shortcomings, crises, and conflicts - is highly unsuitable to play the role or the nineteenth century Italian Piedmont in a twenty first century all-Albanian unification. Because of its extremely favorable, epicentral, geostrategic position ("The Fortress of the Balkans"), along with its enormous natural, development, and demographic resources, the region of Kosovo and Metohija is counted to take upon itself such a role, following, of course, a change of its legal and political status. Terrorist-separatist activities of the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo and Metohija and their patronage by the most powerful Western and Islamic states should both be viewed in this context. In this way a dangerous precedent could be created by the ethnic Albanians in Macedonia are fairly certain to follow, while the newly-created conditions of regional instability would foster similar demands by minorities in other Balkan states - from Bulgaria to Greece - including the demands by the Albanian minority in the other Yugoslav federal unit, Montenegro, to be granted territorial autonomy as well.

By Peter Beaumont in Likosane and agencies

The Guardian, Monday March 1, 1999

On the first anniversary of the war in Kosovo, commanders of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) declared yesterday that they would 'fight until independence', despite the West's efforts to secure a compromise peace deal. At a mountain-top ceremony around 3,000 ethnic Albanians, including several hundred KLA fighters, gathered to commemorate the first casualties of the war - 24 men of the Ahmedi clan of the village of Likosane - who were murdered by Serb police seeking to avenge the killing of two colleagues by rebels.

As the ceremony took place fighting erupted in Kacanik, close to the Macedonian border, in which one Serb policeman was killed and four were wounded. Between 2,000 and 3,000 ethnic Albanian refugees fleeing the fighting were prevented from crossing the border by the Serb authorities.

'They say... that Serbian forces have been building up ever since the end of the peace conference,' said a United Nations spokesman, Fernando del Mundo.

'They want to cross into Macedonia as refugees but none of them have proper papers. The men say that if the women and children get across they will go back home.' Observers fear that flashpoints such as Kacanik could get out of control, jeopardising the prospects for a new peace conference on March 15. Both sides have been told to be ready to sign an autonomy deal or face the consequences.

The KLA delegation to the peace talks in Rambouillet last week said it had agreed 'in principle' to an interim deal which appeared to rule out independence. But yesterday commander after commander lined up to tell ranks of KLA troops, including a number of women fighters, that they were committed to the independence struggle.

This has raised again the prospect of a split in the KLA's ranks between the hardliners and those who appear to be in favour of a political settlement, such as Hashim Thaqi, the KLA political director and chief negotiator.

Commander Gani Koca told the crowd: 'We are here to tell the world we are not terrorists. We are here to tell the world we will fight for our land. We have a name now. We are the KLA. We are your national army. And we promise you independence soon.'

Among those at the ceremony was Ilir Qerimi, aged eight. 'My father is on the front line,' she said. She was wearing a KLA uniform and when asked why, she replied shyly: 'Because I want to be free.'

BBC Sunday, August 2, 1998 Published at 01:01 GMT 02:01 UK

BBC: World: Europe

Photo: The Circassians arrive in southern Russia from Kosovo

Seventy-six members of an ancient ethnic minority group have fled the Kosovo conflict and arrived in southern Russia.

The Adygs, better known as Circassians, flew in from the Kosovo region of

Yugoslavia to their historic homeland in southern Russia on Saturday.

Forty-two families whose ancestors settled in Kosovo during the 19th century, when it was part of the Ottoman Empire, had been living in two villages outside the Kosovar capital, Pristina.

Ethnic Albanians who are in the majority in Kosovo consider the Circassians, although fellow Muslims, too supportive of the Serbs.

The ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which is fighting for independence from Yugoslavia, is thought to have threatened the Adygs.

The Adygs say they have been "sitting on their suitcases" since the Kosovo conflict began in 1997.

A second group of Adygs is due to arrive in Russia later this month having travelled through Bulgaria and across the Black Sea.

Aslan Karashev, a minister in the tiny Adyg republic in the north Caucasus, says: "Adygeya is ready to receive its compatriots from Kosovo."

The Adygs are being brought over by Russia's Ministry of Emergency Situations and will be housed in a former kindergarten. Mr Karashev said they would eventually be given land to cultivate.

Circassians hail from the north Caucasus, but during the 19th century they were displaced by Russia's imperial conquests and were scattered around Europe and the Middle East.

11. Note: Not all villages go along with the KLA's armed struggle for independence, and Albanians who resist the KLA may be Muslim, Catholic and Orthodox Christians --BCW

AFP: Oct. 9, 1999; Albanian Villagers Arm themselves against KLA

OSEK HILA, Yugoslavia, Oct 9 (AFP) - Many see him as a spy or a traitor but 78-year-old Mushk Jakupi doesn't care. For this aging ethnic Albanian in Kosovo, who started up a village militia loyal to Serbian authorities, it's the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) that is to blame for the latest problems in the province.

"When I saw what they were doing, I decided that we would not let the KLA enter our village," said Jakupi, a cafe owner in this locality near Djakovica in western Kosovo.

He started up a local self-defense group, with the benediction of Serbian police, that now keeps close watch over this village of 1,600 ethnic Albanians.

A World War II veteran when he fought with the communist resistance fighters behind Tito, Yugoslavia's long-time post-war communist ruler, the still energetic Jakupi remains nostalgic for what he calls the great Yugoslavia federation formed after 1945.

"People from the KLA came one night and told us we should leave Osek Hila becaue there was going to be fighting here. We refused. They came back a second time and, in the morning, I found this piece of paper tacked onto the door of my house," he said.

Jakupi showed a sheet of paper ripped out of a notebook. The words, written in ballpoint pen, warned: "Either you are with us or we will burn down your houses. Join your brothers." It was signed: "Ushtria Clirimtare e Kosoves," the words for Kosovo Liberation Army.

"When we understood what was going to happen, we gathered everything we had, axes, shotguns," said Jakupi. Shortly afterwards, he and his group captured three LKA men. "We took them to the police who said we could keep their weapons."

He opened a cupboard to show off three Kalashnikov assault rifles. Serbian police never gave him or his men any arms, he insisted. "We also have our shotguns and pistols, we don't need anything more."

His "militia" numbers about 20 men, two of whom wore police uniforms. Recently, Jakupi said, they seized weapons that had been supplied by the KLA rebels from the homes of Osek Hila villagers.

"We forced them to leave the village. But no one was killed. No home was burned. Not even a chicken was hurt," he said.

Osek Hila indeed remains intact with no signs of the devastation evident in numerous other Kosovo villages where homes have been destroyed in fighting between ethnic Albanian separatists and Serbian forces, or burned down by Serbs.

But the local regime imposed on the village by Jakupi and his men is not welcomed by everyone. "I would prefer to have my house burnt down than to live like this," said the local representative of the Kosovo Democratic League (KDL), the party of Kosovo's moderate ethnic Albanian political leader.

The KLA has so far distanced itself from Rugova's initiatives for a negotiated settlement to the Kosovo conflict, with Rugova saying they reject his leadership as being too conciliatory towards Belgrade.

Between the police here and Jakupi's self-defense group, "we feel like we are in prison," said this man of 52 who asked not to be named. He pointed to the local police station on a nearby hilltop, with what he said were about 30 policemen.

Police also man a checkpoint where the road out of the village joins the main national highway into Djakovica, three kilometers (less than two miles) farther on.

He said he himself had not been able to get to Djakovica for the last four months because police "mistreated" him each time he tried to get through the checkpoint, then sent him back to his farm.

On Wednesday, outside Jakupi's cafe, two village men in their Sunday best waited to board a bus to take them to the mayor's office in Djakovic. There, some 80 Albanians loyal to Belgrade took part in a public meeting, arranged with official help, aimed at creating a political party to defend their views.

But such people are estimated to represent only a small minority of the Albanian Kosovars, who account for 1.8 million people or 90 percent of the province's population. Most want independence.

More than 1,400 people have died since the Serb-led Yugoslav government launched its offensive against ethnic Albanian KLA separatists in February.

The Serb shelling of villages has driven tens of thousands more from their homes, creating what UN refugee officials warn is an impending humanitarian disaster as NATO debates whether or not to go ahead with air strikes to stop Belgrade's crackdown.

http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/98/12/16/timfgneur01001.html?1313719/

December 16 1998

Tom Walker sees British monitors try to calm tensions after Kosovo ambush

BRITISH monitors in Kosovo were turned back from sensitive zones on the border with Albania yesterday as Yugoslav Army and Serb police units continued a mopping-up operation against guerrillas who escaped an ambush that killed 31 of their colleagues.

[...]

There appear to have been no army casualties from the operation, the biggest border incident of the conflict. The Serbs are believed to have good intelligence, thanks partly to Muslim Slavs, or Gorans, [Gorani] who, while speaking Albanian, are often against the KLA.

04:31 a.m. Jan 29, 1999 Eastern

By Kurt Schork

PRISTINA, Serbia, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Western governments are coddling ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo, awarding them at the negotiating table what they never won on the battlefield, the top Serbian official in the province complained on Friday.

Zoran Andjelkovic, President of the province's governing Interim Executive Council, told Reuters that the exodus of Kosovo's minority Serb population had accelerated since a ceasefire agreement was signed last October 15.

``What has happened here since the October agreement has been a tragedy. Our police were forced to withdraw and international monitors were slow in arriving,'' Andjelkovic said.

``KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) terrorists filled the vacuum, using murder and kidnapping to create panic among Serbs, who fear for their lives.''

Ninety percent of the population in this southern Serbian province are ethnic Albanian. KLA guerrillas are fighting for independence on behalf of that majority.

Andjelkovic said 97 villages had been ``cleansed'' of Serbs in the last seven months, 36 of them since the ceasefire agreement that required most Serbian security forces to withdraw from Kosovo or return to bases within the province.

``The manager of a large public enterprise here told me today that his engineers are leaving Kosovo,'' the Serbian official recounted from his office in Pristina, the provincial capital.

``The engineers tell him they don't know where they will find a place to live or to work and that they don't care, so long as they and their wives and children can sleep at night without worrying about terrorist attacks.''

Andjelkovic cited the December kidnapping and murder of the deputy mayor of nearby Kosovo Polje and the kidnapping of five Serb civilians, including two women, near Vuciturn this month as the sort of incidents destroying communal life in Kosovo.

``It's true the five Serbs (in Vuciturn) were finally released, but ethnic Albanians and Serbs will never live together normally in that area again. They will always be divided by fear and mistrust,'' Andjelkovic said.

``The murder of the deputy mayor of Kosovo Polje, who lived in the village of Velika Slatina, caused four Serb families to leave. It's not just that another 15 Serbs left, it's that Velika Slatina has been ethnically cleansed by terror.''

``We blame the international community. NATO is used to pressure our police. The KLA interpret that as support. They are not a liberation movement. They are terrorists and criminals who don't hesitate to kill Albanians when it suits them.''

More than 2,000 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands driven from their homes in Kosovo in the 11 months since the KLA began its guerrilla campaign.

The international community, mostly worried about containing the violence and preventing a wider Balkan war, say both sides in Kosovo prey on civilians.

Western officials warn that Serbian and ethnic Albanian leaders will soon be summoned to peace talks and ordered to agree an interim peace deal under threat of NATO action.

Among those likely to have a place at the table is the KLA, a development that Andjelkovic warned could be enough in itself to derail the proposed talks.

``We have no intention of trying to choose negotiating representatives for the Albanian side,'' Andjelkovic said.

``Neither do we intend to sit across from those killing and kidnapping our people. If the international community had taken a stand against the KLA and allowed our police to finish their work there would be a real chance for peace.''

By ROBERT H. REID .c The Associated Press

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) -- The bodies of six people, at least four of them ethnic Albanians, have been found in different areas of southern Kosovo, Serbian media reported Monday.

Meanwhile, there were reports that small bombs were hurled into two ethnic Albanian-owned cafes in the north of Kosovo, a region of the main Yugoslav province of Serbia.

The bullet-riddled bodies of an ethnic Albanian 17-year-old girl and a 20-year-old ethnic Albanian male were found in Djakovica, about 45 miles southwest of Pristina, the Serb Media Center reported.

Four other bodies were found Monday in separate locations in southern Kosovo, the center said. Two of them were identified as ethnic Albanian males, one missing since Jan. 31 and the other since Friday.

The two other bodies have not been identified.

In addition, the government's Tanjug news agency said an ethnic Albanian-owned cafe was bombed Sunday night in Kosovska Mitrovica, 25 miles northwest of Pristina.

A Serb official, Ivica Mihajlovic, said another ethnic Albanian-owned restaurant was bombed late Sunday in northern Kosovo. There were no injuries reported in either bombing.

Mihajlovic denounced the latest attacks as ``works of terrorist gangs striking against peace talks'' being held in France.

More than 2,000 people have died and hundreds of thousands have been driven from their homes in a year of fighting in Kosovo.

AP-NY-02-08-99 1755EST

From: Stephanie Neale Niketic, Newburyport, MA

Date: 99-02-08 14:47:25 EST

These are from the Serbian Ministry of the Interior (www.mup.sr.gov.yu). They have more on their site, this is my selection/summary:

STATS FROM JANUARY 1, 1991 TO FEBRUARY 7, 1999

------------------------------------------------------

*Including Serbian, Roma, Gorani, etc.

 Civilians Injured in Terrorist Attacks in Kosovo

------------------------------------------------

Entire period

(1991-02.07.99)

Gravely.101

Lightly.125

TOTAL..226

-------------------------

........1998-1999

Serbs/Montenegrins.179

Albanians.......104

Gypsies.......14

Other Nationalities.... 6

Foreign Citizens......1

TOTAL.......304

Of these, 125 have escaped or been released. Remaining number are dead or "destiny unknown."

Monday, February 8, 1999 Published at 12:53 GMT

BBC: World: Europe

The trial has opened in Macedonia of nine ethnic Albanians on charges of terrorism and hostile activities against the state.

They are accused of involvement in a series of bomb attacks against police stations and barracks in several cities during the past two years.

If convicted the defendants could face up to ten years in prison.

Ethnic Albanians make up around one-quarter of the two-million-strong population of Macedonia.

Although there are ethnic Albanian ministers in the Macedonian government, there are fears that the separatist conflict in neighbouring Kosovo might spill over to Macedonia.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service

16. Subj: Kosovo: KLA attacks on Catholic Albanians

Date: 99-02-25 11:34:06 EST

From: AV

This is a follow up on an earlier note....

Attached are some excerpts from a study on UCK (KLA) attacks against Albanians. A dirty little secret of Kosovo is that the UCK is not supported by Catholic Albanians. Catholic Albanians are routinely killed, kidnapped, and shot at by the UCK.

The suffering of the Keljmendi clan is a case in point.

The vicious revival of Blood Vendetta is evidenced by UCK attacks against the Keljmendi family; one killed 2.Dec, three killed 25.Jan, and three wounded 15.Feb. The powerful Roman Catholic Keljmendi clan has prominently fought alongside Serbs since at least the 1690 Turkish campaigns. The following wire service reports along with commentary shown in brackets explains the details.

[Reader Note: PMC is the Serb "Pristina Media Center" acknowledged by the international press corps to be highly accurate. KIC is the Kosovo Information Center maintained by Albanians. CDHRF is Adem Demaci's KLA information organ, the "Center for the Defense of Human Rights and Freedoms," which has shown itself to be highly inaccurate and the source of much propaganda. -Benjamin Works]

2. Dec 14:30 (PMC) PRISTINA - The body of Veton Kelmendi (1969) from Pavljane village was found this morning next to Pec ö Pristina road near by Glavicica village. According to the investigation, he was shot with a bullet in his head. The investigation team claimed, members of Albanian terrorist groups, that previously had been threatening his family, killed Kelmendi.[please note Veton is likely related to Shaban Keljmendi, his sons Besim (12 years) and Hadziu (11) killed by UCK in well known Îtractor1 incident' on 25.Jan.99 see report below, also see bombing of Keljmendi house on 15. Feb where 3 children were wounded. The Kelmendi clan is Roman Catholic. ]

25 January 1999 15:25 (PMC) PRISTINA - Shaban Keljmendi, his sons Besim (12 years) and Hadziu (11) from village of Kramovik, Sanija and Hisen Kurti from village Crmjana, Djakovica municipality, were found today killed on Rakovina ö Jablanica local road, southwest of Klina. [please note: Shaban Keljmendi is likely from same family as Veton Kelmendi (1969) killed by UCK on 2 December, and see story of 15. Feb where land mine was planted at Keljmendi home wounding three children ]

The OSCE Verification Mission members reported the case to the Djakovica police around noontime. The police accompanied by the Pec District Court investigation judge Rade Gojkovic and the OSCE Verification Mission members visited the incident spot. Initial investigation results indicated they had been killed from fire weapon while having a ride on a tractor. The territory the bodies were found at is controlled by the separatist so called "KLA".

(KIC)[additional information on 25.January attack ] The bodies of the killed Albanians were lying in the scene of the crime until 15:20 hrs today (Monday), when police took them to the Gjakova morgue

(SIRI-US) [additional information on 25.January attack from Benjamin Works' newsletter] This week we have more odd events including the death of 5 Albanians who were gathering corn stalks as fodder for their animals. The KLA immediately tried to pin this on "Serb" police, but government sources point out that the area is under KLA control and that shell cases around the scene indicate the people were killed at close range, not from a distant armored car alleged by the creative minds of the Albanian propaganda mill.

15. Feb (KIC) heavy explosion that occurred yesterday (Sunday) around 11:00 CET in Kramovik village of Rahovec municipality, the local chapter of the Council for the Defense of Human Rights and Freedoms (CDHRF) said. [ as noted before the CDHRF is run by hard line nationalist Adam Demaci political head of the UCK, and its statistics have long since been discredited]

Agim T. Kelmendi (12), Valdet L. Kelmendi (12) and Valdrin L. Kelmendi (6) were seriously wounded in the blast that is presumed to have been caused by a mine planted by Serbian forces in the village, namely on the doorstep of an Albanian house.[ This planting of a mine at someone's front door is clearly a UCK crime especially when one finds out that Keljmendi family has been target of UCK before] Agim and Valdet were taken to the Gjakova hospital. [ on the 25th of January the UCK killed Shaban Keljmendi, his sons Besim (12 years) and Hadziu (11) also from village of Kramovik, who appear to be from same clan as the 3 children attacked today]

Compiled by Alexander Vucelic, South Salem, NY

Ankara - Turkish Daily News 2/25/99

[NOTE: There is a sizeable Turkish merchant-class community in Pristina and other large towns and that community has even maintained a university in Pristina. They too have been intimidated by the KLA and discriminated against by their Albanian Muslim neighbors. -Ben Works]

Ankara on Wednesday called for more rights for all ethnic groups, including the Turkish minority, in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo.

"In order to find a lasting political solution for Kosovo within the territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, all national communities living in Kosovo, including the Turkish minority, should be granted rights and freedoms beyond those recognized by the 1974 Constitution," a Foreign Ministry statement said.

The statement also said that Ankara was concerned over the recent renewal of violence in Kosovo.

"Turkey... calls on the parties to avoid violence and to comply with the related resolutions of the U.N. Security Council," the statement said.

It stressed that Turkey welcomed the willingness of the Kosovo parties to solve the dispute through peaceful means.

19. SIRIUS, Feb. 25, 1999; Item: In a phone conversation the other night, Dragan Petrovic, a teacher in Kos. Vitina told his brother Milos, my neighbor here in NY City, that almost 50 Catholic families in his area's villages have left their homes empty and left the country to get away from KLA. Gone to US, Croatia, Australia, elsewhere.

Ben Works

20. On the wounding of three Catholic Albanian Local Police, Reuters v. the local Serbian Pristina Media Center (PMC)

By Deborah Charles

PRISTINA, Serbia, Feb 26 (Reuters) - Tension increased in Kosovo on Friday with sporadic clashes between ethnic Albanian rebels and Yugoslav security forces, who detained a group of international monitors for 24 hours.

[.]

In Kosovo itself, two people died and at least eight were wounded in sporadic clashes around the province, where army and police troops deployed in force in several areas.

``There is a large buildup of Serb troops and artillery,'' a KVM monitor said in Suva Reka in the south west.

``There are tanks, APCs (armoured personnel carriers) and extra security forces deployed.''

The area, where the KVM managed to persuade ethnic Albanian guerrillas not to attack a police patrol on Thursday, is just a few kilometres (miles) away from Studencane, where fighting erupted on Saturday, forcing thousands to flee their homes.

Sporadic fighting continued for a fifth day around Vucitrn, northwest of the regional capital Pristina. Small arms, machine gun and anti-aircraft fire echoed across snow-covered hills.

The army says its recent activity in the area is a ``winter training exercise.''

An aid agency official said on Friday four ethnic Albanians had been wounded in Thursday's gunfire exchanges around Bukos.

Hundreds of ethnic Albanian refugees fled from Licej, about 40 km (25 miles) north of Pristina in the Vucitrn area on Friday. The United Nations believes at least 4,000 ethnic Albanians have been driven from their homes by fighting in the hills west of Vucitrn this week.

In a separate incident, two ethnic Albanian civilians were killed and one was wounded during a firefight between Serb police and Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) guerrillas in a village in southwestern Kosovo, an international monitor said.

He said the shooting erupted when the police walked into the KLA-controlled village of Randobrava. OSCE verifiers who were in the area helped to negotiate an end to the fighting, he said.

[.]

16:30 02-26-99

B. The Serb Pristina Media Center report on the Three Wounded Albanians --Catholics.

26 February 1999 18:45 PRISTINA - Three local police members were wounded from an ambush at the outskirt of Ramoc village, Djakovica municipality today at 2 PM.

Mikelj Abazi and his Marjan, as well as, Mihil Abazi were wounded.

Mikelj and Marjan Abazi were seriously wounded and were transported to the Pristina hospital, where the surgeons have been fighting to save their lives. Mihil Abazi was transported to the Djakovica hospital.

While they were driving back from a funeral, Albanian terrorists shot from automatic weapons and anti-tank launchers at the three of them from an ambush. They fired back.

According to the investigation initial results, at least 15 terrorists attacked them.

The OSCE KVM was also informed of the attack.

21. Note: Some 100 or more villages have been cleansed of Serbs just since the October "ceasefire" if Serb and OSCE reports are to be believed. This was forwarded by Father Sava of the Decani Monastery --BCW

March 01, 1999

After repeated ethnic Albanian extremists threats, Danica Milincic, the last Serbian woman in the village, left Samodrez, the Municipal authorities in Vucitrn informed Tanjug today.

Danica Milincic moved in with her son in Vucitrn, and three Serbian households of Milic and Slavkovic left Samodrez in the end of the last year, after repeated ethnic Albanian extremists' threats.

A four-class elementary school is closed in Samodrez last year due to pupils and parents fear of the ethnic Albanian extremists. Now six pupils of this school attend the curriculum in a Serbian house in Lazici village, which is situated 2,5 kilometers from Samodrez. Samodrez is 10 kilometers away from Vucitrn.

In the 60s there were 40 Serbian and 40 Albanian households in Samodrez. Today there are three times as many Albanian houses - 150, while Samodrez is left without Serbian people.

According to a folk tale and to the epic "Uros and the Mrnjavcevici", in the dawn of the Battle in Kosovo in 1389 there stood a church described as "the white church of Samodrez". In this church [Prince] Knight Lazar blessed his army. The same tale says that Milos Obilic was buried in this church after the battle. On the hill above the church there was an old town with the castle of Vuk Brankovic, where Knight [Prince] Lazar dined with his army leaders and uttered the famous appeal from the epic: "He, who shall not come to the battle in Kosovo."

The present church was constructed on the foundations of the old one in 1932.

In 1981 ethnic Albanians committed a sacrilege in the church, and in 1982 they brutally murdered Danilo Milincic, son of Danica Milincic, the last Serbian woman whom left the village yesterday. Ferat Mujo, the murderer of Danilo Milincic, was sentenced to capital punishment.

22. March 3, 1999; Note from Blic Magazaine (Belgrade) forwarded by Decani Monastery's Father Sava

("There is no humanitarian disaster" says Pola Gedini, UNHCR spokeswoman " 90 villages [are] left without [their] Serb [residents due to KLA terror and cleansing.] --Fr. Sava)

Belgrade ö Pola Gedini, spokeswoman of UNHCR said that in the past 10 weeks over 60.000 people in Kosovo ran away from their homes and villages. Over 20.000 returned to their homes.

"Current military actions and exercises of the SerbianArmy caused exodus of over 5.000 civilians from the six villages in the area of Kacanik and the village of Gajre. More than 1.200 people ran away to Macedonia between Feb. 26 and 28. They are housed with the families in the villages near the border and are receiving UNHCR aid", said Gedini.

According to her words the exercises of the Yugoslav Army the evening before, made about 1.500 people run away. They returned home when the maneuvers were finished. However, there is the exodus of the Serbs and some other ethnic groups, too. "KLA uses aggressive tactic[s] which usually causes exodus of the civilians and sometimes provokes Serbian military response. More than 90 villages in Kosovo are now without the Serbs. There are more Serbs announcing their exodus", says Gedini.

According to data of the Yugoslav Red Cross, presently there are more than 30.000 people not of Albanian origin outside their homes, mostly of them are Serbs.

Still she said there was no humanitarian disaster in Kosovo.

Decani Monastery tel +381 390 61543

38322 Decani, Serbia fax +381 390 61567

http://www.decani.yunet.com e-mail: decani@EUnet.yu

23. HUMAN EVENTS

The National Conservative Weekly

Vol.55 No.9

March 5, 1999

NO GO ON KOSOVO

If, like most Americans, you know absolutely nothing about the Balkan backwater of Kosovo, you will learn all of you need to know in the next few paragraphs to understand that President Clinton's policy there is violently at odds with all good sense and U.S. national interests.

Last July along the Serbian-Albanian frontier, the Yugoslavian Army encountered a group of Muslim guerrillas trying to sneak across the mountains into the Serbian province of Kosovo.

The Yugoslavians killed a guerrilla named Alija Rabie. He was a citizen of Albania, but also a member of the Kosovo Liberation Army that is fighting to wrest control of Kosovo from Serbia. Documents found on Rabie's body showed he was escorting into Serbia a 50-man contingent of foreign fighters intent on waging jihad against Kosovo's minority population of Orthodox Christians, usually referred to in the press as "Serbs."

"The group included one Yemeni and 16 Saudis, six of whom bore passports with Macedonian Albanian names," reported Jane's International Defense Review.

Jane's is no partisan pro-Serbian publisher. It is the highly reputable, pro-NATO, century-old, British-based firm that over the years has developed a remarkable reputation for scooping the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency on important news about rogue regimes and insurgencies around the world.

The clash last July between Yugoslavian Army troops guarding the Serbian-Albanian border and Muslim insurgents trying to sneak weapons and foreign mujahideen into the Serbian province of Kosovo was not a unique incident. It was routine.

Indeed, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA, but known in their native tongue as the Ushtria Clirimtare e Kosoves, or UCK) is suffering a large portion of its casualties in exactly these sort of clashes. "This total of UCK loses incurred during frontier crossings (136 dead since January 1998)," reports Jane's, "is quite significant when compared to the 180 UCK soldiers who were killed during the fighting in mid-1998. (During this period 112 Serb police and 51 Serb army personnel were killed with 395 police officers wounded."

"The UCK's tactical mistake," says Jane's, "has been to concentrate its horse-borne arms trains on two frontier crossing areas... instead of dispersing its arms caravans the length of the frontier."

"The UCK has compounded this tactical errors," adds Jane's, "by trying to push ever larger guerrilla groups along these same infiltration routes in the mistaken belief that they can smash their way through Belgrade's border defense."

"The UCK favors these extremely dangerous routes," explains Jane's, "because topographically they are the easiest and shortest conduits for the pack horse arms caravans to guerrilla- controlled areas of Kosovo. Furthermore, the UCK is in a hurry to get arms to its host of ready recruits and proceed with its third winter objective, expansion of guerrilla control in Kosovo."

"UCK expansion on the ground in Kosovo is gradual, insidious process containing three elements," says Jane's.

1) Assassination of Muslims who don't cooperate. "First is the elimination of opposition to their authority among the Kosovo Albanians," says Jane's. "This usually means targeting those few Albanians with connections to the Serb police."

2) Assassination of Serbian police. "Secondly," says Jane's, "there are occasional attacks on the Serb police patrols and the few remaining Serb police checkpoints. In one case a single RPG was fired at a Serb police car by a group that escaped in a car via the network of country lanes which the UCK has prepared as a parallel transport system in case Serb police return to their tactics of saturating main roads with checkpoints to prevent UCK vehicle movement."

3) A reign of terror against Orthodox Christians of Kosovo. "The third and most important element this winter has so far been the harassment and assassination of Serb officials and civilians from Kosovo's Serb minority," reports Jane's. "This has included sniper attacks, Serbs dragged from their vehicles and beaten, together with pressure on them to leave their homes.... This UCK tactic has the double benefit of forcing Serbs to quit the province and provoking police into retaliation and subsequent censure by OSCE [NATO-backed Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe] observers."

When Serbian Christian forces do this to Albanian Muslims, the Western press usually, and rightly,, refers to it as "ethnic cleansing."

So, what is President Clinton's policy toward this war of national secession being waged by acts of terror by Arab- backed Muslim guerrillas within the historical boundaries of a European nation? It is, first, to threaten Serbia with bombing raids if the Serbs don't agree to remove their troops from their own national territory and, second, to grant "autonomy" to a region that would then be run by the KLA, with U.S. troops standing guard on the ground, protecting the KLA guerrillas from Serbian Christian forces.

This policy hit a snag last week when the KLA itself refused to sign off on the deal when it was offered them by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. KLA forces believe they can win their independence outright from the Serbs without the aid of bombing raids delivered courtesy of Uncle Sam. They fear that American troops will needlessly yoke them to the historically Christian nation they believe they can defeat on their way to establishing an Islamic republic in what Winston Churchill once called the soft underbelly of Europe.

The Serbs for their part say they will never let go of Kosovo because it is the cradle of their indigenous Orthodox religious tradition. It is for them what Mecca is to the Muslims.

As has been much reported in the liberal press, the Serbs, too, have committed outrageous acts of terror to keep Kosovo in Christian hands.

But the United States has no business intervening in this religious civil war - on either side. It is high time the Republicans in Congress raised their voice to tell President Clinton clearly and unequivocally, No Go on Kosovo.

[Plese send all editorial correspondence to

1 Massachusetts Avenue, WW

Washington, D.C. 20001

Tel.: (202) 216-0600.]